During those protracted calamities which accompanied and succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, the sciences had no other sylum than the sanctuary of that Church which they now so ung tefully profane. Cherished in the silence of the convents, ey owed their preservation to those same recluses whom, in our days, they affect to despise. A friar Bacon, a bishop Albert, a cardinal Cusa, resuscitated in their laborious vigils the genius of an Eudoxus, a Timocharis, an Hipparchus, and a Ptolemy. Patronized by the popes, who set an example to kings, the sciences at length spread abroad from those sacred retreats in which religion had gathered them under her protecting wings. Astronomy revived in every quarter. Gregory XIII. corrected the calendar; Copernicus reformed the system of the world; Tycho Brahe, from the top of his tower, renewed the memory of the ancient Babylonian observers; Kepler determined the figure of the planetary orbits. But God humbled again the pride of man by granting to the sports of innocence what he had refused to the investigations of philosophy;-the telescope was discovered by children. Galileo improved the new instrument; when, behold! the paths of immensity were at once shortened, the genius of man brought down the heavens from their elevation, and the stars came to be measured by his hands.

These numerous discoveries were but the forerunners of others still more important; for man had approached too near the sanctuary of nature not to be soon admitted within its precincts. Nothing was now wanted but the proper methods of relieving his mind from the vast calculations which overwhelmed it. Descartes soon ventured to refer to the great Creator the physical laws of our globe; and, by one of those strokes of genius of which only four or five instances are recorded in history, he effected a union between algebra and geometry in the same manner as speech is combined with thought. Newton had only to apply the materials which so many hands had prepared for him, but he did it like a perfect artist; and from the various plans upon which he might have reared the edifice of the spheres, he selected the noblest, the most sublime design-perhaps that of the Deity himself. The understanding at length ascertained the order which the eye admired; the golden balance which Homer and the Scriptures give to the Supreme Arbiter was again put into his hand; the comet

submitted; planet attracted planet across the regions of immensity; ocean felt the pressure of two vast bodies floating millions of leagues from its surface; from the sun to the inutest atom all things continued in their places by an admirab1 equili brium, and nothing in nature now wanted a counterpois but the heart of man.

Who could have thought it? At the very time when so many new proofs of the greatness and wisdom of Providence were discovered, there were men who shut their eyes more closely than ever against the light. Not that those immortal geniuses, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Leibnitz, and Newton, were atheists; but their successors, by an unaccountable fatality, imagined that they held the Deity within their crucibles and telescopes, because they perceived in them some of the elements with which the universal mind had founded the system of worlds. When we recall the terrors of the French revolution, when we consider that to the vanity of science we owe almost all our calamities, is it not enough to make us think that man was on the point of perishing once more, for having a second time raised his hand to the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Let this afford us matter for reflection on the original crime: the ages of science have always bordered on the ages of destruction.

Truly unfortunate, in our opinion, is the astronomer who can pass his nights in contemplating the stars without beholding inscribed upon them the name of God. What! can he not see in such a variety of figures and characters the letters which compose that divine name? Is not the problem of a Deity solved by the mysterious calculations of so many suns? Does not the brilliant algebra of the heavens suffice to bring to light the great Unknown?

The first astronomical objection alleged against the system of Moses is founded on the celestial sphere. "How can the world be so modern?" exclaims the philosopher; "the very composition of the sphere implies millions of years."

It must also be admitted that astronomy was one of the first sciences cultivated by men. Bailly proves that the patriarchs, before the time of Noah, were acquainted with the period of six hundred years, the year of 365 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, 36 seconds, and likewise that they named the six days of the crea

tion after the planetary order. If the primitive generations were already so conversant with the history of the heavens, is it not highly probable that the ages which have elapsed since the deluge have been more than sufficient to bring the science of astronomy to the state in which we find it at the present day? It is impossible to pronounce with certainty respecting the time necessary for the development of a science. From Copernicus to Newton, astronomy made greater progress in one century than it had previously done in the course of three thousand years. The sciences may be compared to regions diversified with plains and mountains. We proceed with rapid pace over the plain; but when we reach the foot of the mountain a considerable time is lost in exploring its paths and in climbing the summit from which we descend into another plain. It must not then be concluded that astronomy was myriads of centuries in its infancy, because its middle age was protracted during four thousand years: such an idea would contradict all that we know of history and of the progress of the human mind.

The second objection is deduced from the historical epochs, combined with the astronomical observations of nations, and in particular those of the Chaldeans and Indians.

In regard to the former, it is well known that the seven hundred and twenty thousand years of which they boasted are reducible to nineteen hundred and three."

As to the observations of the Indians, those which are founded on incontestable facts date no farther back than the year 3102 before the Christian era. This we admit to be a very high degree of antiquity, but it comes at least within known limits. At this epoch the fourth jogue or Indian age commences. Bailly, combining the first three ages and adding them to the fourth, shows that the whole chronology of the Brahmins is comprised in the space of about seventy centuries, which exactly corresponds with the chronology of the Septuagint. He proves to demonstration that the chronicles of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Chinese, the Persians, and the Indians, coincide in a remarkable.

1 Bail., Hist. de l'Ast. Anc.

2 The tables of these observations, drawn up at Babylon before the arrival of Alexander, were sent by Callisthenes to Aristotle.

3 See note I.

degree with the epochs of Scripture. We quote Bailly the more willingly, as that philosopher fell a victim to the principles which we have undertaken to refute. When this unfortunate man, in speaking of Hypatia,-a young female astronomer, murdered by the inhabitants of Alexandria,-observed that the moderns at least spare life, though they show no mercy to reputation, little did he suspect that he would himself afford a lamentable proof of the fallacy of his assertion, and that in his own person the tragic story of Hypatia would be repeated.

In short, all these endless series of generations and centuries, which are to be met with among different nations, spring from a weakness natural to the human heart. Man feels within himself a principle of immortality, and shrinks as it were with shame. from the contemplation of his brief existence. He imagines that by piling tombs upon tombs he will hide from view this capital defect of his nature, and by adding nothing to nothing he will at length produce eternity. But he only betrays himself, and reveals what he is so anxious to conceal; for, the higher the funeral pyramid is reared, the more diminutive seems the living statue that surmounts it; and life appears the more insignificant when the monstrous phantom of death lifts it up in its arms.

CHAPTER IV.

NATURAL HISTORY-THE DELUGE.

ASTRONOMY having been found insufficient to destroy the chronology of Scripture, natural history was summoned to its aid. Some writers speak of certain epochs in which the whole

Bail., Ast. Ind., disc. prelim., part ii.

2 Philosophers have laughed at Joshua, who commanded the sun to stand still. We would scarcely have thought it necessary to inform the present age that the sun, though the centre of our system, is not motionless. Others have excused Joshua by observing that he adopted the popular mode of expression. They might just as well have said that he spoke like Newton. If you wished to stop a watch, you would not break a small wheel, but the main-spring, the suspension of which would instantly arrest the movements of the whole machine.

universe grew young again; others deny the great catastrophes of the globe, such as the universal deluge. "Rain," say they, "is nothing but the vapor of the ocean. Now, all the seas of the globe would not be sufficient to cover the earth to the height mentioned in Scripture." We might reply that this mode of reasoning is at variance with that very knowledge of which men boast so much nowadays, as modern chemistry teaches us that air may be converted into water. Were this the case, what a frightful deluge would be witnessed! But, passing over, as we willingly do, those scientific arguments which explain every thing to the understanding without satisfying the heart, we shall confine ourselves to the remark, that, to submerge the terrestrial portion of the globe, it is sufficient for Ocean to overleap his bounds, carrying with him the waters of the fathomless gulf. Besides, ye presumptuous mortals, have ye penetrated into the treasures of the hail? are ye acquainted with all the reservoirs of that abyss whence the Lord will call forth death on the dreadful day of his vengeance?

Whether God, raising the bed of the sea, poured its turbulent waters over the land, or, changing the course of the sun, caused it to rise at the pole, portentous of evil, the fact is certain, that a destructive deluge has laid waste the earth.

On this occasion the human race was nearly annihilated. All national quarrels were at an end, all revolutions ceased. Kings, people, hostile armies, suspended their sanguinary quarrels, and, seized with mortal fear, embraced one another. The temples were crowded with suppliants, who had all their lives, perhaps, denied the Deity; but the Deity denied them in his turn, and it was soon announced that all ocean was rushing in at the gates. In vain mothers fled with their infants to the summits of the mountains; in vain the lover expected to find a refuge for his mistress in the same grot which had witnessed his vows; in vain friends disputed with affrighted beasts the topmost branches of the oak; the bird himself, driven from bough to bough by the rising flood, tired his wings to no purpose over the shoreless plain of waters. The sun, which through sombre clouds shed a lurid light on naught but scenes of death, appeared dull and empurpled; the

1 Job.